Huachuca Astronomy Club

09/29/2026

FACT: Every year, the night sky is becoming 10% brighter.
Eighty per cent of people live under light-polluted skies. Do we really need bright white floodlights at the front of every garage? Replacing lights with ones that are bright enough to do the job – and no brighter – is sufficient. Better still, your home security lights may be advertizing that you have something VERY valuable, something that thieves may want ! Better still, get a security camera system that uses infrared (most do).
Access to darkness is about more than stargazing.
The night is its own habitat. Artificial lights confuse animals who use the moon and stars to navigate during migration.
Migrating birds get thrown off course by bright lights.
Even your own sleep habits can be thrown off by unnecesary light invading your bedroom.
And big cities are not the only place where you can't see the stars at night... even Sierra Vista has gotten so bright that only a few stars can be seen and the Milky Way is obliterated!
Do yourself and every other living creature a favor: Dim down your own outside home lighting... the stars will thank you for it!
For more https://darksky.org/what-we-do/international-dark-sky-places/

09/29/2026

What’s to see in the October night skies? Let’s start with Saturn!

Saturn will rise in the east and will be the brightest object above the horizon. By midnight it will be about 60* above the southern horizon. As the month moves on Saturn will rise higher and higher in the sky in the early evening.

What’s cool this year is that its rings are inclined that they will look specular, especially compared to last year when the rings were just a thin white line.

On October 4th Earth will be between Saturn and the Sun which will make the rings even brighter than a week or so later even though Saturn is 784 million miles from the Earth.

With a small telescope, look for a star near Saturn… it will likely be the giant Saturn moon Titan which is the 2nd largest moon in our solar system, way bigger than our own Moon, 48% larger in diameter and larger than the planet Mercury!
Saturn will be the highest around midnight this whole week.

For more information on Saturn from The National Air and Space Museum: https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/saturn
Clear skies!

Saturn, known as the Ringed Giant, is a fascinating planet. Delve deeper into what we know about Saturn.

09/25/2026

Tonight, Friday, September 25, 2026 is our club's "open to the public" monthly meeting at 7 pm.
You are invited to hear our speaker, John Barentine, who is the Principal Consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, LLC. He will be joining us via Zoom. His talk is titled: A Southern Arizona Dark-Sky Update: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. If you are noticing that we are losing the night sky to overly bright city and business lights then become part of the solution. See you there!
Location: Room A102 Cochise College Downtown Campus
2600 E Wilcox Drive, Sierra Vista

09/06/2026

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope was just recently put into space... but who is Nancy Grace Roman? Here's a short video to get you up to speed!

NASA has just launched the brand new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telesc...

09/01/2026

Where, oh where are the planets tonight (besides being hidden by monsoon clouds :^)

08/28/2026

Today, Friday evening, August 28th, 2026 at 7pm, is our monthly meeting.
You are invited and this meeting is open-to-the-public.
Location: Room A102 Cochise College Downtown Campus
2600 E Wilcox Drive, Sierra Vista

Our guest speaker is: Our speaker will be Dr. Kevin Hainline.

The title of his talk is “JWST: Four Years of Cosmic Discovery”.

Kevin Hainline is a member of the JWST/NIRCam science team, and studies galaxy evolution in the high-redshift Universe. His research focuses on using data from JWST to find and characterize the farthest galaxies from Earth, and he explores how we can best uncover galaxies and other interesting sources photometrically. He also looks at the relationship between active galactic nuclei and star-forming galaxies, including how an active central super-massive black hole grows alongside its host galaxy. He's also an expert in science communication, and has spoken about our relationship to the Universe at events around the world.

08/15/2026

08/11/2026

Should there be a hole in the clouds... the Perseid Meteor Shower !

What Is the Perseid Meteor Shower?
Arguably the most famous meteor shower of them all, the Perseids is a major meteor shower active between July 17th and August 23rd, with its maximum typically occurring on the night of August 12th/13th. At that time, under ideal conditions, observers can reliably expect to see around 100 shooting stars an hour, making the shower one of the most prolific on the astronomical calendar.

As a result, the Perseid meteor shower has become a very popular celestial event and attracts considerable attention every year. Both the mainstream media and the astronomical community extensively publicize the shower, with this publicity aiming to both promote the event and increase public awareness of the hobby in general.

What Makes the Perseids So Special?
Not all meteor showers are the same. Some, like the Lyrids are bright, while others, such as the Southern delta Aquariids, are relatively faint. The Leonids are fast, but the Ursids move comparatively slowly. Both the Taurid showers are known to produce fireballs, while the Leonids produce storms, with thousands of meteors an hour - but only once every 33 years.

While the Perseids are not famous for being exceptionally bright, or for producing high numbers of fireballs, they have a reputation for reliably putting on a good show that almost anyone, anywhere can enjoy. This is why, for some, the shower has gained the nickname of “Old Faithful,” and just like the famous Yellowstone geyser, you know you won’t be disappointed.

08/09/2026

EXPLODING COMET MCNAUGHT!
There's an exploding comet in the morning sky. Comet 220P/McNaught was a nondescript speck of 17th magnitude in late May when it suddenly multiplied in brightness 7000-fold. It was fading back toward obscurity when, on Aug. 5th, it exploded again. The second outburst (650x) propelled the comet to 7th magnitude, an easy target for binoculars and small telescopes.
"It is magnitude 6.7 as best as I could measure without suitable comparison stars," days Dan Bartlett, who took the picture using a backyard telescope in June Lake, California.
The comet is in the constellation Cetus near the star Mu Ceti, best seen around 4 AM local time. Its expanding atmosphere is already wider than 7 arcminutes--a quarter the size of a full Moon--with a short tail pointing away from the sun.
Some observers are comparing 220P to Comet 17P/Holmes, which famously exploded in 2007. Holmes, however, brightened a million times, becoming a bright naked-eye object that you could watch expand from night to night--no telescope required.
Telescopes monitoring 220P's debris found it rich in gas. Some astronomers suspect a fragment broke off the nucleus in May, exposing fresh ice to sunlight. If so, more explosions may be in the offing.
One more bang, and you won't even need binoculars.
This is what it looks like now: